As Brennan hearing opens, mounting questions on how Obama chooses whom to kill

So, let's get this straight: Two years ago President Obama ordered the assassination-by-drone of an American citizen overseas. The fellow was successfully vaporized.

And according to Wednesday afternoon's headlines, Obama just now "agrees" to share with Congress the memos he relied on for his legal justification to kill that American. And by extension, others that Obama or his successors might deem expendable for "national security" reasons.

This from the arugula-loving Democrat who professed such profound moral outrage over the non-lethal (Republican) terrorist interrogation process called waterboarding. The brief senator who said such "extreme" measures, producing priceless intelligence saving countless lives, violated American morality and war conduct, albeit without killing. And that waterboarding undermined the rule of law.

But whacking an American terrorism suspect on foreign soil with no hearing or evidence beyond geographical proximity to other suspected terrorists is fine? And for two whole years was unworthy of explanation to the equal branch of elected government that declares war? Seriously?

Wasn't this what the Soviets were doing to perceived domestic security threats abroad for so many years? But it's OK now because the intelligence agency doing the killing is our CIA instead of their KGB?

Is there a civil liberties attorney in the house?

We're going to hear a whole lot more about this issue today and beyond. That's because John Brennan is a key architect of Obama's "There-he-is, let-him-have-it" drone assassination strategy. And Brennan begins his Senate confirmation hearings today to become director of said CIA.

That's a bureaucratic vacancy created when David Petraeus got caught doing his female biographer and simply had to resign, consensual adultery being publicly unforgivable. While the State Department bureaucrats responsible for the systemic security failures that caused the violent deaths of four Americans in the Benghazi consulate sacking are still on the job and going home safely each night.

How can those people in Washington even breathe without choking on their hypocrisy? Every few days brings another stunning outrage from that swamp. They come -- and go -- so fast it's become the new normal. A government agency gives itself an $800G party. The president talks of reducing spending while adding $5 trillion to the national debt with no sign of impending thriftiness with money from taxpayers -- or China.

The Energy Department, with a keen eye for Obama campaign bundlers and doomed businesses, picks more than 30 green energy losers to pour in taxpayer money, including $545 million down the solar rathole called Solyndra.

A branch of Obama's in-Justice Department generates a massive gun-running operation shipping weapons to Mexican drug cartels that kill dozens of people, including a Border Patrol agent. Nobody goes to jail. The attorney general in charge gets a second term. And Obama stonewalls congressional investigators.

Congress imposes ObamaCare on America for its own good, but exempts itself and Obama. The Democrat Senate refuses to adopt a federal budget for nearly four years in direct violation of its own laws. Three dozen Obama aides are hundreds of thousands of dollars behind in their income taxes. But Obama travels the country demanding a larger "fair share" of taxes be paid by the wealthy 2% who already pay 45%.

Now, this president, faced with congressional grumbling and possible threat to Brennan's confirmation, condescends to outline how he goes about dispatching American terrorists not by the rule of law that he once championed with such faux sincerity. But by Obama's self-written Rule of Memo.

It's a tardy memo from the self-professed most transparent administration in history, which was unavailable for Americans to read until leaked to NBC this week. (In Washington, if you want to announce something loudly, leak it to Congress and tell them it's secret. They fall for it every time.)

In 16 pages the memo asserts that some unidentified and undefined "informed, high-level" government official can finger American targets based on suspicions the man has been involved "recently" in undefined "activities" that could pose a national threat and absent evidence the target has "renounced or abandoned such activities."

In other words, we have the right to cause you to remain silent -- for good.

Now, we don't have any problems with killing bad guys, Taliban, al Qaeda and their franchisees who are or would do harm to America or Americans. War is a mean, messy business and in our experience America only loses when it does war with political restraints.

We don't care if Anwar al-Awlaki or Samir Khan were even once Big Ten football fans. Nobody over here is playing any violins because they were, in an unannounced flash, sent to meet their posses of virgins. Al-Awlaki, for instance, played alleged roles in, among other nefarious activities, the underwear airplane bomber and the Fort Hood massacre.

But there's that troubling word "alleged." Out of an abundance -- some would suggest, excess -- of legal caution our society is not executing hundreds of Americans legally convicted of heinous homicides by juries of their peers. Sometimes these appeals go on for decades over the most minute legal technicalities because death has no appeal.

But al-Awlaki or others like him can without any legal hearing whatsoever be exterminated abroad on the basis of classified allegations and a secret decision by a politician who can then take to the election stump to boast of devastating al Qaeda's leadership? Who could argue with that assertion? Or prove the gooey remains did not belong to a U.S. enemy?

This is an administration, remember, once so queasy about the words "war on terror" that it called acts of terrorism "man-caused disasters."

But this Obama precedent seems like an awfully slippery slope of self-appointed executioner to leave to any politician with something to gain by silencing individual enemies, national or otherwise, foreign or domestic. It also sounds more like a Chicago mob boss, than the president of the United States.

About Investor's Business Daily

Investor’s Business Daily provides exclusive stock lists, investing data, stock market research, education and the latest financial and business news to help investors make more money in the stock market. All of IBD’s products and features are based on the CAN SLIM® Investing System developed by IBD’s Founder William J. O’Neil, who identified the seven common characteristics that winning stocks display before making huge price gains. Each letter of CAN SLIM represents one of those traits.

Select market data is provided by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services. Price and Volume data is delayed 20 minutes unless otherwise noted, is believed accurate but is not warranted or guaranteed by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services and is subject to Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services terms. All times are Eastern United States. *Reflects real-time index prices.